I didn’t see a door anywhere; it had to be around on the aft side. I stepped on board and started that way along a narrow starboard walkway. But I got only as far as a shuttered window halfway along before the noises coming from inside stopped me. Two people were having sex in there, and they weren’t being quiet about it. For that matter, they weren’t even being civilized about it.
Voyeurism isn’t one of my vices; I backed away in a hurry and disembarked onto the board float. Once, several months ago, Kerry had rented an X-rated videotape and played it for us on the new VCR she’d bought, just so we could see what one of those things was all about. What it was all about embarrassed the hell out of me, as old as I am. I quit watching after about five minutes, but Kerry stuck with it for another twenty or so. It wasn’t because it made her hot, she said; it was because she thought all those moans and groans and gyrations were funny-in a perverse way, of course. I hadn’t believed her for a minute, not before she half dragged me into the bedroom and definitely not afterward.
I climbed up to the embankment and walked along it a ways, killing time. Down where Channel Street right-angles into Sixth, in the shadow of the freeway looming high overhead, some of the Mission Creek residents had turned an acre or so of ground into a surprisingly impressive vegetable garden. Corn, beans, zucchini, strawberries, some other things. It really was a whole different world down here, a little self-contained community that continued to flourish outside the mainstream of city life. Somehow, in a way that I couldn’t quite define, it gave me a feeling of hope.
After about ten minutes I went back down to the float, along it to Melanie Purcell’s houseboat. This time, when I got as far as the starboard window, nobody was making any noise inside. So I kept moving aft. Around back there was a little oblong deck floored in green Astro-turf and, in the middle of the decal-decorated superstructure, a door that I proceeded to bang on. Nothing happened, so I banged on it again.
It opened abruptly and I was looking at a bulky guy in his early twenties, naked except for a pair of Levi’s. He had sandy hair puffed out in one of those frizzes, and judging from the scowl on his face, he also had a lousy disposition. He looked me over, decided I was nobody he knew or wanted to know, and said, “What is it?”
“Richard Dessault?” That was the name of the guy Melanie was living with. His occupation, according to Ben Klein, was “poet.” Some occupation.
“So?” he said. “You want something?”
“Not from you. I’d like to talk to Melanie.”
“What for?”
“To ask her some questions about her uncle’s death.”
“Ah, Christ,” he said disgustedly, “ another cop.”
“I’m a detective, that’s right, but not a-”
He shut the door in my face.
It would have made me mad, except that he didn’t shut it all the way; the wind blew it open again. He was moving away across the room inside, toward another door at the opposite end, and when he felt the cold air against his bare skin he said without looking back at me, “Come on in then. I’ll get her.”
I went in and closed the door, making sure it latched this time, and had a look around. There wasn’t much to see. The basic furnishings were a couple of low-slung teakwood tables, a pair of Oriental-style lamps, and a bunch of big pillows-shiny material in a variety of colors and exotic designs, most of them with tassels and fringe-scattered around on the floor. On one of the tables was a fancy water pipe-a hookah, I think they’re called-that you use to smoke tobacco, among other substances. It was all supposed to create a sultan’s harem effect. But the color TV and stereo equipment along one wall spoiled it; so did the overblown wall poster of some weird rock group called the Aluminum Dandruff.
I waited about two minutes. I could hear voices from one of the other rooms, but not what was being said. It was a little chilly in there, but then maybe they depended on body heat to keep them warm; they had been generating enough of it a few minutes ago. Another of their heating devices, no doubt, was marijuana. The sweetish, acrid smell of it was sharp in the air.
The table nearest me had a note pad and pencil on it. There was some writing on the pad; nosily I moved over a couple of steps and bent down to look at it. Nine lines, almost illegibly printed, under the title “Acapulco Gold”: gold, gold can’t feel blue with the gold- gold in the sunset, gold in the hills and valleys of my mind- the big gold rush gold, gold digging the gold- the big gold rush
I straightened up again. Poet, my ass, I thought.
The voices stopped finally, and the door across the room opened, and a girl came in. Dessault came in, too, but he hung back by the far wall while she moved forward to where I was. I don’t know what I expected her to be like-beautiful and dripping sex appeal, maybe, like heiresses in bad Hollywood movies-but she was a surprise in any case. Not much past twenty-one, skinny, flat-chested, with mouse-brown hair frizzed up like Dessault’s and bright vulpine eyes, one of which was slightly cocked. On both cheeks, which were still flushed from her recent exertion, little patches of acne flourished. She wore Levi’s and a tank top that made her chest look even flatter. Her feet were bare and dirty and the toenails were painted black.
Sugar and spice and everything nice, I thought sourly.
I said, “Melanie Purcell?”
“That’s right. Who’re you?”
I told her my name.
“Cop, huh?” she said.
“No. Private investigator.”
A frown pinched her forehead and pulled her thin little mouth out of shape; the one cockeye seemed to be looking a couple of inches to my left. “You told Richie you were a cop.”
“No I didn’t. He jumped to that conclusion.”
Dessault pushed away from the wall. “You don’t have to talk to him, Mel,” he said to her. “What’s he snooping around for anyway?”
I looked at him. He looked back at me for a while, not too long; then he said, “Ah, shit,” and made a production out of lighting a cigarette-the legal kind that only give you lung cancer.
“What do you want?” Melanie asked me. She sounded sullen and distracted, as if her thoughts were on something else. More fun and games, probably. “Who sent you here?”
“Nobody sent me. I’m investigating your uncle’s death.”
“Leonard? What for?”
She was a sweetheart, all right. “He was murdered,” I said. “Or didn’t anybody tell you?”
“You don’t have to be a smart-ass,” she said, as if she were talking to somebody her own age. “All I’ve done lately is talk to cops. I’m tired of it.”
“You sound real broken up about Leonard’s death.”
“We weren’t close. Besides, he was a damn fag.”
“Uh-huh. And you don’t like fags, right?”
“Right.”
“What would you say if I told you I’m working for Tom Washburn?”
“Him,” she said. “You a fag too?”
“That’s what I thought you’d say. Look, Miss Purcell, I don’t want to be here any more than you want me here, believe me. Just answer a few questions and I’ll go away.”
“What questions?”
“About your father and the night he died.”
“Christ,” Dessault said, “not that trip again.”
I looked his way. “What trip is that?”
“That somebody killed Mel’s old man too. Nobody killed him. The old bastard drank too much Scotch and forgot to watch where he was walking, that’s all.”
“You share that opinion, Miss Purcell?”
She shrugged. “Nobody liked Kenneth; he was a prick. I suppose somebody could’ve pushed him but I don’t think so.”
A prick, I thought. Her own father. “You didn’t like him much, I take it.”
“I had plenty of reason not to. The only nice thing he ever did for me was die and leave me some money.”
“A third of his estate.”